Go Hawks! New Bilge Pump & Muffler Installed!

It’s been a great season for Seattle’s football team. Right now at halftime they are ahead by 15-0. The twelfth man is everywhere in Seattle. On Friday every other person was wearing their support jerseys and colors, flags and banners flew in every other business and on top of the downtown buildings. We have come so far Seahawks!

Another achievement has been unlocked this weekend as well. I installed the muffler and started the engine for the first time in three months. So far everything looks and works great. Not a drop of water leaked inside of the engine compartment and there is no exhaust except on the outside of the boat, which means she’s ready to wander again. I might do an oil and coolant change before I start taking Satori around the Sound again. I am not going to take Satori out until I have an autopilot I did just finish with some major projects. This morning when I turned the forced air and the stove fans on the temp rose to 76 degrees inside the cabin while it was 32 degrees outside. Fog rolled in as well so I opted to hang out and watch the game. Plus I did some electrical changes to eliminate having to turn the sensors on to flush the toilet. Now all of the pumps are on the same circuit, which is much better. I also relabeled the electrical panel to make more sense of the switches. There are some that I am still puzzled as to what they do, if anything at all. I bought a labeler to label the wire and terminal blocks so I can begin drawing out the schematic of Satori’s electrical system. One of the biggest assets of a major overhaul is a well planned execution. Understanding where every wire goes is the only way to do it right. It’s going to take some time so I’ll hold off until I know what to do. Until then, inventory away.

Another project I was able to finish on Saturday was the new backup bilge pump. I had plenty of time to figure out a good plan on a solid solution. I removed the old manual pump which was mounted in the engine compartment and I was pretty confident that it needed to be rebuilt so swapping for another automatic made sense. I replaced the old bilge hose with new hose and then attached it to the new pump so I didn’t have to make any new holes in the boat. The new pump is mounted just above the little guy and switches on right before it spills over into the center bilge. The idea being that if the little 800 GPH pump cannot keep up and the second one switches on they are both working together to pump water from the boat. The upper bilge also has a bilge alarm which is installed in the engine panel in the cockpit. I was lucky that there was a universal mount I could use without having to drill any holes so I just needed to route the wires down into the bilge compartment. Once I had everything installed I did a quick test by filling the bilge with water. With the lower pump turned off I could test and see that the upper pump was turned on right when it is supposed to. Then checking both to make sure nothing blows and the test should be good enough for the real thing.

The old manual bilge pump in need of a rebuild.Both bilge pumps installed. Total of 2800 gph (minus head)

I have already ordered both a rebuild kit for the Jabsco diaphragm pump I replaced with the VSD pump and I hope to use the diaphragm pump for draining the center bilge and kitchen sink once I have it rebuilt. I still need to figure out where it will be mounted. Space in the engine compartment is getting scarce and I will need room for a water maker and wash down pump as well in the future. I have a rebuild kit coming for the Whale 25 manual bilge pump so I can rig a portable and storable bilge pump that I can use for whatever I need and keep it stowed out of the way with some long hose attached that will allow me to lead the inlet down into the cabin from the cockpit and then enough hose to pump the water overboard. I can have a final backup manual pump ready for if Satori is taking on water and the electricity is out of commission.

I also finally made some sense of the NMEA 0183 protocol and will be sharing that once I have the multiplexer installed this week. It was very confusing at first but once I learned what talk and listening ports were capable of doing it all made sense. Apparently NMEA 0183 electronics can talk to up to three other devices but can only listen one other device. My dilemma is that I need to take my GPS data from the AIS transponder and send it to the VHF radio but also take the VHF radio’s DSC data and send that to the chartplotter but I also have Seatalk sensors that I would like to send to a chartplotter. Fortunately a multiplexer will solve this problem and I just purchased a Shipmodul Miniplex so I will be able to collect all of the data from the various devices and send it out over wifi and through a NMEA 2000 network to the chartplotter and radar.

Anyways, back to the game. Since the time of writing the Seahawks have scored again and now are leading 22-0. Go Hawks!!!

Update: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS are the SuperBowl Champions of 2014! I don’t watch football but I watch the SuperBowl when the Seahawks are winning 🙂